Library’s cockatiel marks 20th year as Children’s Room greeter

If you’ve visited the Children’s Room at the Kewanee Public Library during the past 20 years, you’ve met “Spike.”

In 1993, Jeff Petersen and his wife, Wendy, who raised exotic birds in their Kewanee home as a hobby, donated a four-month-old cockatiel to the library. Plans, according to an April 3, 1993 article by the Star Courier’s Margaret Taylor, were to teach the bird to talk and hold a contest to select a name. The Kewanee Jaycees donated a cage.

Two decades later, the cooing cockatiel still hasn’t learned to talk, just squawk and whistle, but he has become a popular feature in the Children’s Room with parents accompanying their kids exclaiming “Is he still here?”

According to children’s librarian Sara Marsh, he has always been called “Spike” and since he’s been there longer than any of the present children’s department staff, no one knows who won the contest by submitting the name.

If you — the child-now-adult — out there submitted the winning name, or know who it was, you are especially invited to an open house in honor of “Spike’s” 20th birthday from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 29, in the Children’s Room on the second floor. The community is invited and there will be treats for the kids and a chance to make a birthday card for the guest of honor.

When “Spike” arrived the Children’s Room was on the south side of the second floor at the top of the stairs. Library staffer Sally Ripka remembers that “Spike” traveled with the rest of the library staff and books to temporary quarters in the Elks building half a block north where it was located for a year while the library building was being renovated.

When they returned, the Children’s Room had moved to its present location on the north side of the second floor.

As with anyone who gets older, “Spike” has gotten less playful and more cranky. He has become attached to children’s librarian Sarah Barth and will only let her take him out of his cage, shunning Marsh and other children’s librarians Laura Abbott and Michele Reiter.

“When Sarah (Barth) is reading to the children across the room he makes a fuss and wants her attention,” said Marsh.

His cage used to be out in the reading room where he could interact more with the visiting children, but in recent years, he has been moved behind the checkout desk and the kids just talk to him over the counter. For awhile, his cage was parked at the north end of the counter, by the windows, but when feathers and bird feed were found to be the reason the nearby printer wasn’t working, he was moved away from any equipment.

Page 2 of 2 - According to our online research, the cockatiel is a member of the cockatoo family and indigenous to Austrialia. The librarians weren’t exactly sure of the resident bird’s sex, leaning toward male because of the name. Online we found photos of both and “Spike” is definitely a male, which is characterized by the colorful head and top feathers.

The librarians said they have heard birds like “Spike” live to be 20 to 25 years old, and some as old as 30, if healthy and well cared for.

So, in spite of being a “senior citizen,” the library’s celebrity may be around a few more years catching the sharp ears and inquisitive eyes of another generation of children exploring new worlds at the local library.